Lifetime pacts for 120 telepix
Pearson will provide product to cabler for five years
These pictures will come to Lifetime in a steady stream over the next five years, after they complete their license term on one of the broadcast networks, which get four years to play off two runs of each title. Sources say Lifetime will shell out an average of $100,000 a title, putting the total value of the package at about $12 million.
Rand Stoll, East Coast executive VP of programming for Pearson, says some of the pictures will be older ones that have already run on Lifetime and will get their primary plays between now and 2003 on LMN.
Many of the newer pictures will get windows within their Lifetime license term to go to TV stations in syndication for a double run. About 12 Pearson made-fors a year go to syndication -- an average of one a month -- under the umbrella title "Filmleader."
Stoll boasts that 12 titles in the latest syndication package, "Filmleader 5," beat out all of the major-studio syndicated movie bundles in the category women 25-54 in the national Nielsens for the period Sept. 1, 1997 to Aug. 30.
The "Filmleader 5" titles -- which included "Robin Cook's Virus,""Robin Cook's Mortal Fear" and "Deadly Whispers" -- averaged 428 women ages 25-54 for every 1,000 households that watched the movies.
